"Have them taken upstairs. Would you like to go to your room, Miss
Orme?"
"If you please, madam."
"Then I must bid you good-bye," said Mr. Roscoe, holding out his hand.
"Do you not live here?"
"Oh no! I am only a student in my cousin's law-office, but come here very often. I hope the dog-war is amicably settled, but if hostilities are reopened, and you ever make up your mind to give Hero away, please remember that I am first candidate for his ownership."
"I would almost as soon think of giving away my head. Good-bye, sir."
As she turned to follow the servant out of the room, she ran against a young lady who hastily entered, singing a bar from "Traviata."
"Bless me! I beg your pardon. This is——"
"Miss Orme; Erle's ward."
"Miss Orme does not appear supremely happy at the prospect of sojourning with us, beneath this hospitable roof. Mamma, I understand you have had a regular Austerlitz battle over that magnificent dog I met in the hall,—and alas! victory perched upon the standard of the invading enemy! Cheer up, mamma! there is a patent medicine just advertised in the Herald that hunts down, worries, shakes, and strangles hydrophobia, as Gustave Billon's Skye terrier does rats. Good-morning, Mr. Elliott Roscoe! Poor Miss Orme looks strikingly like a half-famished and wholly hopeless statue of Patience that I saw on a monument at the last funeral I attended in Greenwood. Hattie, do take her to her room, and give her some hot chocolate, or coffee, or whatever she drinks."